Tag Archives: Military

The following comes to us from our friends at FRC Action:The U.S. military is suffering at the hands of the Obama administration, both financially and in terms of recruitment and retention. It has prioritized political correctness over military readiness. The latest social engineering experimentation occurred when the Department of Defense lifted regulations preventing those who self-identify as transgender from serving, which had long been in place due to medical and readiness reasons. In fact, the new policy allows the military to also pay for active duty service members who identify as transgendered to obtain hormone therapy or even sex-change surgery.

This is a problem for a number of reasons. First, this policy does not contain any religious freedom protections for chaplains, doctors, counselors and other service members who would object to providing counseling or medical treatment in a way that endorses a person’s identity as transgendered. Even commanders, through the administration’s new policy, will be forced to affirm “gender identity” by using the pronoun of the member’s choice, even if it does not correspond with the service member’s biological sex.

Second, this policy uses federal tax dollars to pay for service members’ gender transitions, resulting in a reduction in individual readiness of the service members undergoing the treatment during a multiyear transition process. Even after this process is complete, there is no scientific evidence that the transgendered person will be mentally or physically healthier after having undergone a sex-change operation. Further, the military will have to provide frequent exceptions for military standards. That could harm military force readiness by jeopardizing the deployability of people in the force because those undergoing mental health or physical changes may not be able to deploy with their unit during the transition process.

The good news is that Congress can delay the implementation of the Obama administration’s recent policy change by adding language in the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2017 (“NDAA”). This bill passed the House and Senate and Congress is “conferencing,” or negotiating, the two versions of the bill now. Call your Senators and Congressman at (202) 224-3121, or email them here. Ask them to tell their fellow Senators and Members of Congress involved in the NDAA negotiations to stop this policy from taking place.